Boko Haram: Nigerians battle ready

 

Photographs showing a group of men, who some online reports described as members of the Boko Haram, flooded the Internet on Tuesday.

Four of the photographs, originally published by a popular Nigerian online portal, showed a mixed crowd praying in an open field.

In another photograph, a close-up shot, about four men are busy slaughtering a cow while two others in army camouflage watch.

Those featured in the photographs are mostly young men and a few children whose ages range between three and five years. Only two female, who appear shy, can be seen in the photographs.

Several hundreds of people may have been captured in the photographs, which showed them observing prayer sessions and taking different positions at different occasions.  The open field where the ceremony took place is in the middle of a thick forest.

Not many of them displayed their guns or other weapons. For instance, a supposed leader of one of the prayer sessions kneels down with a rifle lying on the ground beside him. The gun is labelled 723 with a white marker. The butchers also keep rifles close by as they slaughter the cow.

The original report said the photographs were screenshots from a video made by the insurgents while celebrating last week’s Eid-el-Kabir with their families in an undisclosed location.

Online reports are already suggesting that the images could be part of the sect’s efforts to counter assurances by the Nigerian army that they (the insurgents) had suffered severe defeat in recent weeks.

But, unlike the previous videos, audios and images released by the terrorists, the report has set many members of the online community against online channels that broke the news. According to them, Nigerians have had enough of Boko Haram propaganda, and it is time to play down its antics.

With improvements in digital technology, photographs can now be manipulated to tell a story. There have been instances where fictitious videos and photographs were doctored for the purpose of misleading the public.

For this reason, one Ramatu, who commented via Disqus, an online debate platform, called on Nigerians to be wary of reports that are full of biased conclusions.

She picked holes in the report and photographs, saying it was high time the government began to question bloggers and online media operators over exaggerated reports on sensitive issues.       

Ramatu said, “This is rather unprofessional. Where is the ‘open field’ located? Maiduguri, Kano, Kaduna, Abuja, Lagos, Enugu or Port Harcourt? So they are ‘openly carrying rifles’? What does that tell anybody? What do you expect – that terrorists in their hideout somewhere pretending to be pious and at prayer would not ‘pray’ in an ‘open field’ and ‘carry rifles’?

“I am disappointed at whoever posted this story. What is the story here? Why not say you are the official journal of Boko Haram, helping them to put out their propaganda? Honestly, this is almost criminal and seditious in that they help to spread fear when Nigerian soldiers are paying in blood to maintain peace.”

 Ramatu’s sentiment was echoed on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms where the photographs of the suspected insurgents were circulated.  

 But, amid criticism from a section of the Internet community, bloggers, whose primary goal is attracting traffic, have continued to feast on the photographs. As typical of citizen journalists, they also claim that the shots are taken from a new video released by the sect, although nobody has seen the video till date.

However, some social media activists said that the videos cast doubt on the soldiers’ claim that they are winning the battle. A tweeter wondered why how the insurgents stills managed to gather so many members if they were, indeed, being killed.

In its usual style, the Nigerian Armed Forces as of Tuesday evening had not responded to the reports on “video screenshots”, at least not through its social media platforms.

Communication experts had warned that the military would continue to lose the online propaganda war unless it became more proactive.